Ubisoft announces the release of
financial results (Adobe Acrobat format) for their fiscal year 2013, saying their
numbers for the year are "at the upper end of the recently-raised target
ranges." They report annual sales are up 18% to €1,256 million and non-IFRS
operating income is up 79% to €100 million. The results include perspective from
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot:

"In 2012-13 our financial performance
outstripped the targets that we had announced a year ago, notably with non-IFRS
operating income up 79% and higher-than-expected cash generation. The expertise
and talent of our teams enabled Ubisoft to manage the year’s difficult market
conditions and the drop in the casual segment remarkably well. In addition, the
success of Far Cry 3 confirmed our strong comeback in the major segment of
shooter games.” Guillemot continued "We began fiscal 2012-13 with two major
franchises: Assassin’s Creed and Just Dance. Twelve months later, we have
substantially extended our reach by establishing Far Cry as another major
franchise, building upon the great potential for our newest brand, Watch Dogs,
and making our online/digital segment an increasingly significant part of our
business. The steady rise in our operating and financial performance during the
last three years is the direct result of the longterm investments we have made,
with the continued development of our creative capacity and the bolstering of
our expertise in online activities.”

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Sigh. I already addressed your Sleeping Dogs argument. Your issue isn't that you had to update the game. It's that the updates were ridiculously huge due to the DLC being included with them. That's a case of poor DLC implementation, not an issue with automatic updates. And how often is being fully updated a problem? In 99.9% of cases, you want to be fully updated. Only occasionally does the latest patch create problems and even then, that's an issue with the patch, not automatic updates. For every broken or poorly implemented patch, there are about 50 patches that improve their respective games, making automatic updates advantageous in most cases. Once a game is up-to-date, Steam lets you play it offline without issue. In the unlikely event that Steam ever gets shut down, I'm pretty confident that they'll offer a permanent offline mode for any games you've downloaded. In fact, if I downloaded and updated all of my games right now, I'm pretty sure I could just switch to offline mode and never log in again.

I've already stated that digital distribution (and thereby Steam) are not really viable for people with poor connections or strict bandwidth limits. This was never in contention. However, the majority of PC gamers do not suffer from these limitations and as time goes on, good connections will only become more prevalent. It's a concern that will only grow less relevant in the future.